What keeps me awake in retirement isn’t the past. It’s the future of policing in a democracy.
I have seen, up close, the great good that well-trained, educated, community-oriented police can do. I have also seen how quickly police power, when untethered from law and conscience, can do immeasurable harm in a society. That tension is no longer theoretical. It is showing up, unannounced, in American cities with teams of federal immigration agents who aren’t always willing to follow the rules we teach—and require—our local police officers to live by.
I recently attended a traveling Mennonite teaching on nonviolent resistance — a tradition more than 400 years old. What they offered echoed what worked for us in Madison: local, practical, disciplined non-cooperation and joined to justice-seeking…